


Slipping off the course that we prepared

by heavenisalibrary



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [24]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3813307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She needs him to be good because he’s her salvation, because he promised her they’d be a team if she brought him back on the steps of Berlin, because he looked at her like she was the center of the universe, and she’s going to need to borrow his light to be the sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping off the course that we prepared

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: things you said that I wish you hadn't.

He’d said he’d kill for her. Him — the Doctor, pacifist, coltish limbs, bow-tie wearing, giggling, morally superior, had said he’d kill for her. He’d said it calmly, over dinner, thumb stroking over her hand, his lips quirking up at the end like it’s some sort of private joke. He’d said he’d  _kill_  for her. Nonspecific, general, a vague threat of violence in her name.

She wishes he hadn’t.

Sometimes, when she’s young and still sorting things out, she sees that flicker of fear in his eyes, followed by a guilt that bows his back and forces his hands into his pockets and make his gaze dart around the room. She doesn’t like it — she loves him, for whatever little that’s worth with her, and she wants to comfort him, but she also thinks he deserves it. She doesn’t tell him that, of course, just refocuses, and sometimes he promises her they’ll get revenge, that they’ll make it right — even  _she_  knows they’re not the same things, though he forgets, sometimes — and take down Kovarian and the Silence and anyone they ever involved themselves with.  _Take down_ , he says, the words both soft and hard on his tongue. He doesn’t come out and say it, but she can see it in the way these thoughts straighten him with purpose and cast a hard edge into his eyes. He means  _kill them_.

She appreciates his softness, though. She appreciates that even when he wants to hurt people, he doesn’t, or at least doesn’t come out and say it. It isn’t that she’s suddenly developed a moral compass — because honestly, it would do her head in, after everything she’s done — and it isn’t that she particularly cares about the lives he threatens even when he can’t get the words right, it’s just that she needs him to be good. She needs him to be good because he’s her salvation, because he promised her they’d be a team if she brought him back on the steps of Berlin, because he looked at her like she was the center of the universe, and she’s going to need to borrow his light to be the sun.

Time goes on, though, and he never makes good on his plans, just talks about them in increasingly harsh, hurried whispers, like the thoughts are forming more clearly in his head, and even his own mouth shies away from them.

“They’ve moved on by now,” River says with a shrug. “Maybe they’re not even with the Silence anymore. Maybe they’ve reconsidered.” It’s not that she cares about Kovarian or any of her initiates; it’s not even really that she cares about the Doctor. It’s a selfish need, for him to be good, for his goodness to justify her life up until this point, for his goodness to take her over and make her something worth being. She doesn’t have a self-esteem problem by any means — she’s just been tangential to the human experience for so long, she’s learned to be very objective about things. Objectively, she’s a black hole. Objectively, if he doesn’t stop her, she’ll swallow the whole universe into blackness.

“It doesn’t matter,” says the Doctor, grabbing her face with clammy hands. “What they did to you, River, what they  _did_  to you…” he cuts off and chokes up, and she tilts her head at him.

"It’s not about me,” River says. “It’s about you. You’re trying to assuage your guilt, not avenge me.”

“Two birds,” he says, “one very large, hard stone." 

He kisses her quiet, then, and she lets him, because for all of the darkness she sees seeping in through the cracks in his morality, she  _needs_  him to be good. 

Of course, it only gets worse from there. He starts showing off to her — bigger and grander gestures, even at the expense of others. He starts being careless with the lives he used to move heaven and earth to save. He starts shrugging it off when he loses someone. He stops taking companions, only her, swept up into his big, lonely ship and asked to dance until she’s dizzy with his clever words and keen eyes and the way his hand fits just right against her hip, and how he knows the spot on her neck that makes her legs give out, and how he offers her the universe and asks nothing in return.

She wants more from him, though. She wants him to be the Doctor, and she’s afraid that he’s so caught up in being her husband that he’s forgotten how. She knows things are over, though, when he says that over dinner — so casually, so vague. It’s not Kovarian or the Silence or Colonel Runaway; it’s somebody, somewhere, who’s probably so much better than they are, and all she’d have to do she realizes, looking into his eyes, is point and ask.

That’s terrible power for a girl like her to have. He tangles his fingers with hers, giving her hand a squeeze, and she looks away into her wine glass, trying not to think about how she’s ruined him, how her whole life has been building to this anyway — she was born to kill the Doctor, and now she’s going to have to do it. The thought settles, hot and sticky, between her hearts, but it’s also a hard certainty she doesn’t debate with herself about for a minute. She’d needed his light and he’d given her his love instead.

She wishes he hadn’t.


End file.
